The Horrors We Last Faced
by BethShadows
Summary: It always happens. When everything's nice and settled, something stirs it up. They had a nice family going on , then it was ripped apart. A family can be torn and a world can be broken in a matter of minutes. And those minutes can leave you isolated out against the world. Alone. Drowning in your own fate.
1. Prologue -Where They Are Now

**I have a lot of plans for this but hopefully I'll manage to weave them all in. This fic is a lot darker than Mako, so you've been warned. Enjoy!**

 **I don't own Mako Mermaids or Skulduggery Pleasant.**

* * *

Zac stood in the empty grotto. While piles of gold coins and other trinkets remained a large bulk of the once splendid array of rare and valuable objects and ingredients were gone. It wasn't just that. The whole place had a ghostly feel. Mimmi was gone. Rita was gone. Ondina was gone. Sirena never dropped by. Neither did Lyla or Nixie. And Nerissa was far more gone than the rest. They were just across the ocean. _Ha, just._ Shanghai was thousands of miles away. And Ireland even further.

It had been two months. Two months since he had seen through Mimmi's eyes the body of his mother lying drenched in blood. She had been a Mermaid and she had spent her last moments bleeding out on land. After that Rita and Mimmi left. The Sanctuary came in and took over the investigation. Stories were set up. Plane records falsified. As far as anyone else knew Rita had left for Ireland to visit family a week before and Mimmi had left the day before. Rita had dropped back a few times to collect stuff, but she never stayed long. She had left a phone number on a small, rectangular strip of paper. Zac kept it pinned up on a board, but never called.

Zac now officially owned a house. Rita still paid the bills but it was officially his. Cam convinced him to keep it. They were planning to turn the grotto into a man-cave. Thank god for Cam. And Evie. And Carly. And David. And his parents.

He has grown up without the knowledge that the parents who cared for him and allowed him to flourish in the harsh world, were not his true parents. Then he found his real mother. Then he lost her. Whoever had ended his mother's life had not stepped forth to claim their notorious fame of killing one of the most powerful mermaids in the oceans.

Zac trailed his fingers over the wooden railing, leaving tracks in the settled dust.

"Zac!"

"In here Evie!"

He let his cloak of sadness drop. Evie didn't need to see him like this. Not any longer. Neither did Cam. Not when there was work to be done.

* * *

Mimmi stared at the ceiling. It was white with indented patterns. It was surprisingly warm, snuggled under the duvet like a land girl. Her room was silent, but she could hear the murmur of Rita's TV through the thin wall separating their rooms. Ireland was far colder than what she was used to, but then she was spoilt. She was a Northern Mermaid who grew up in the cushioned warmth of the Pacific instead of braving the North Atlantic where her original Pod dwelled.

She felt she was drowning. In grief. In the unknown. In the fact that she was so far away from her only remaining family. What was that song Sirena sang? Mimmi softly sang to herself

 _Being alone in this place_

 _Knowing that soon I'll be home_

 _And I'll pray_

 _As we share forever and grow together_

 _Facing so much everyday_

 _I'm closer right now but still so far away_

 _But I won't surrender_

 _Cause I remember -_

Mimmi cut off her singing as the all too familiar tears leaked forth. She spent her whole life believing she had been abandoned, she grew up away from her brother. Now she was alone again. _Not totally alone_. She had Rita, but the Mermaid was busy dealing with her own stuff to be there as much as Mimmi needed her to be. They were both looking for someone to support them, but it was something they couldn't find with each other. Mimmi listened to the whispering from the TV trying to find something to latch herself onto the world before she spiralled away, like a guppy caught in a whirlpool.

She didn't want to close her eyes. She didn't want to open herself to nightmares that festered within, ready to torment her 'rest' with the images and scene of finding her mother lying her own blood while whoever had done it left free.

At that moment, Mimmi felt she would do anything to be with Nerissa or Zac. The only upside was that Ireland, or the west coast was battered by the same ocean she came from and her mother came from. And for now, it was the best she had. It was her strongest link to her own past.

* * *

 **Thoughts?**


	2. Chpt 1 - A Death in the Family

A Death in the Family

The house looked different. As Mimmi stood shivering she saw the whole world differently. Things were shadowed. Darkness took root all around and warped the world to its will. She knew what was coming when she would enter the house, but she didn't stop. She walked down the dying grass, below a blood tinted sky. She opened the gate and it slammed itself shut behind her, bolting. She walked up the door and it opened for her by an invisible force, awaiting for her to discover the houses prize.

The rooms were empty of furniture. The lights were broken. It was so very, very wrong. A shattered photo frame lay on the ground, the glass making a decorative rug. She walked up the stairs, each one creaking in turn, like someone pressing each and every key on a piano. She turned right and walked the down the hall. There were three doors. One on the right. One on the left. One facing her at the other end of the hall. She walked towards it. As she drew closer it opened. Like the front door had. Mimmi swallowed and stepped in. She knew what lay in here.

The room had a metallic tang to the air. It made her stomach coil. She stepped in and the world came into focus. She saw the pale carpet splattered red. The broken mirror, dotted with red. The bed sheets, stained and dripping. The body, lying on the sheets. Throat slit. Wrists cut. An expression of pain etched on forever. The corners of the mouth cut into a smile. When this body had been alive, she had been a mother. Her mother. Mimmi screamed.

Mimmi sat upright, tears in her eyes. It was always the same. She was shaking and sweating. She flung off the covers. Her room was dark. She moved her finger and the light turned on. Mimmi made her way across the grey carpet, trying not to trip on yesterday's clothes she had left lying.

Her door was dark wood with a gold handle. It was this golden handle she pushed to open the door to the lit hall. She sighed in relief. This hall had four doors. Two on the right, one on the left and one at the end. Hers was one of the right had side ones, the one closer to the stairs. It didn't match her nightmare. not that it would. Her nightmares played in the house halfway across the world.

It was a small set of ten steps that lead to the lower level. Then another three steps to get to the bathroom, with dug in bathtub. Perfect for Mermaids. Mimmi stopped at the top of the stairs and looked out the window. She had familiarised herself with the view over the past two months and during the day Rita would point out the different places. At night Mimmi would try to find them, whenever she had a nightmare. Which was most nights.

The lights were all on downstairs. Mimmi looked at the clock on the wall. She wasn't very good at getting the time from the clocks with sticks pointing to the numbers, but the shorter of the sticks was at 6 and the longer between 5 and 10. She much preferred the clocks that showed you exact numbers.

Mimmi went down all thirteen steps to sort herself out before going to see Rita in the kitchen. The ten steps lead to a landing of pale carpet with a door shaped gap in the wall to the left, then heading straight the carpet lead to a plank of wood that marked the start of the three sanded wooden steps. The floor down these steps was smooth and made up of big, square stone tiles. They were warm under foot. Underfloor heating.

Rita had heard Mimmi's scream. The poor girl rarely got a full night's sleep. So Rita started getting up earlier than she used to, and turned on all the lights. Then waited in the kitchen with a cup of sugary tea made. Mimmi never came straight to the kitchen. She always stopped at the bathroom before coming back up to the kitchen. She didn't want other to see her pain. Even those who had gone through it.

Rita had tried to get Mimmi to talk about Nerissa, but the young Mermaid always refused and looked for distractions. _Just like me._ So Rita taught her about the differences in plants and sea creatures found up here, compared to Mako. She showed her the Irish and Celtic Seas and gathered ingredients not found in the South for Northern only spells and potions. It helped , but not quite enough. So there was one big distraction that could be used. the whole reason why she had taken Mimmi to Ireland rather than any other place, well one of the reasons. Mimmi was no where near ready to know the other.

Introducing Mimmi to the world of Sorcerers and Sanctuaries would result in her being exposed to a world of danger, far more than ever before. But not every job in the Sanctuary involved the life being risked. And telling her about the Ancients and the Faceless ones and the countless types of Magic that humans can do would give her information that Mermaids, as rule, don't know about. she's have far too much to learn in one day. In one week. Every event had plenty stories.

Maybe the people there could help her too. Spending time to the often idiotic antics of Dexter and Saracen or the Monster Hunters would cheer her up. Make Mimmi genuinely laugh again, not fake smiles to put on a happy face.

Mimmi came into the kitchen smiling. She didn't look like the Mermaid who less than five minutes ago was woken up screaming.

"Morning Rita."

Mimmi picked up her cup of tea.

"Morning."

"Weilan never understood how you were also up so early and were happy. She complained whenever I came in the grotto early."

"She did that to me to. She's not a morning person."

Mimmi laughed. It was true , while her and Rita and even Ondina were awake and starting their day, Weilan would be sleeping, oblivious that the world was awake.

"I like the early mornings. I used to get up and swim the reef before anyone else was up. It was always so peaceful watching the world sleep. The watching the sun rise. I tried to get Ondina to come watch it with me, but she was always sleeping," Mimmi said while sitting down.

"I used to love doing that. But here, doesn't matter what time you swim, the chances of seeing another Mermaid is slim."

"Is there actually any other Mermaids around here?" Mimmi wrapped her hands around the mug, feeling the warmth calm her down further.

"There might be, but this place was," Rita paused, "during the War ,almost the whole Pod that lived here - the Celtic Pod- was wiped out and unlike Mako, it was never noted as a legend. It was never rebuilt. It was just put down as an example of what Mermen could do, despite not being just Mermen."

"Mermaids attacked Mermaids?"

"It was a Pod of Mermaids and Mermen, but the Mermaids got caught up in the crossfire, so the Seas here have been mostly void of Mermaids and Mermen for centuries." **#**

"There's so much we weren't taught."

"Ever heard the phrase – History was written by the Victors."

Mimmi nodded.

"The Mermaids won so the Mermaids chose how the story went?"

"Exactly."

"Why aren't we told all this?" Mimmi looked down at her tea. It was calm. Like her own exterior.

"There's no one in the Mako Pod who was around during the War. They've all been killed between the end of the War and a century ago. There's not many around anymore who were actually there. Makes it harder to keep the History straight. Each Pod partly makes up their own version that gets passed down the generations."

"How much do you know about the War?"

"A lot. I've got a couple books if you want to borrow them?"

"Yeah. I want to know what they didn't tell us in the Pod."

Another distraction for Mimmi. She needed it. But first, there was introducing Mimmi to the other world.

 **#Bella was able to turn due to a rather large absence of Mermaids in the area**


End file.
